W E are not in a position to discuss the fundamental conceptions put forward by Hoàng Minh Chính. This text presents only the conclusions of his analysis, in the condensed form of "theses". • His writings of the 1960s (in particular a document of 200 pages, drafted in 1967, entitled "On dogmatism in Vietnam") seem to have had only a very limited diffusion and remain unknown to us. It is nonetheless useful to examine the questions raised by Chín here.
They illustrate a danger inherent in the current international situation; that of anti-bureaucratic critics in the transitional societies resigning themselves, for lack of an alternative, to the "laws of the market" and "cooperation through the United Nations" as the way to bring these countries out of crisis.
Hoàng Minh Chính's document identifies some real problems. It attempts to identify the internal factors underlying the bankruptcy of the Stalinist model -foremost among them the anti-democratic dynamic inherent in the single party system. It discusses the situation of Third World countries undertaking socialist revolution, in a situation where they can no longer count on the aid of the economically more developed "brother countries" like the USSR, and asks how Vietnam, one of the poorest countries in the world, can hope to "directly construct socialism" by "skipping the capitalist stage of development".
It is a serious question, and one which does not only concern Vietnam, as the example of Nicaragua shows. At stake are the conditions of what we call the process of "permanent revolution" in the dominated countries.
Hoàng Minh Chính draws the conclusion from the crisis of the "socialist camp" that only the "bourgeois democratic revolution" (conceived as a very long process) is on the order of the day in Vietnam? . He does so in the name of realism, but does not for all that avoid illusions. The Gulf war broke out after Hoàng Minh Chính had written his "contribution". . It shows that the "new world order" does not open up an "era of peace" and of "dialogue between nations" as Chính had hoped. Waged primarily by the United States, employing unprecedented military means, it could not be described as a "regional conflict".
Waged in the name of the United tionals and some national bourgeois concerns. Industrialization in a south cast Asian country like Thailand, which claims the status of a new "dragon" , is taking place under Japanese hegemony. The Philippines have always discreetly followed the precepts of the IMF and the World Bank. They are now the prisoners of a dramatic crisis. The "Third World" -defined as the ensemble of the dominated countries — is not in the process of disappearing from the map of the world.
Hoàng Minh Chính demands, rightly, that Vietnam respect fundamental liberties, liberties which can in no way be char1. International Viewpoint no. 201, March 4, 1991. 2. IV 204, April 15, 1991. 3. He refers here to Hô Chi Minh's programme of national democratic revolution in the period 1945-55. But this national democratic revolution would precisely open up a transition to socialism. 4. It is also true in relation to the role of the UN in the determination of a Cambodian peace plan. See /V 183, April 23, 1990. 5. Chính refers to the Asian "dragons" like South Korea. But their takeoff was favoured by a very particular historic conjuncture marked, amongst other factors, by the dêfeat of "their" imperialism (in the form of Japan), the US will to isolate the Chinese revolution, and then the availability of "petrodollars". Their "model" of growth, very "statist" , is strongly antidemocratic and violently repressive. The sociopolitical crisis now shaking South Korea shows the sharpness of the contradictions opened up by this model. See in particular Walden Bello, Stephanie Rosenfold, "Dragons in Distress, Asia's Miracle in Crisis": 11 IPDP, San Francisco, 1990.
VIETNAM acterized as "bourgeois". They have been conquered by sustained struggle in the West, against the bourgeoisie, as they must be against the bureaucracy. Many of them, like the right to work and health, or trade union rights, are today subject to repeated new attacks in the developed capitalist countries themselves.
Political "openness" and the right to information are freedoms without which there is no true democracy. It is then symptomatic that, at the time of the Gulf War, manipulation of information reached summits rarely scaled before. The Gulf conflict has, in fact, illustrated the extent to which the system of presidential parliamentarism (which is completely bourgeois) in force in the Western countries, stifles direct democracy. A large scale war has been launched in the name or the mur has been launched in the name of the United States, without the American people ever being allowed to say a word about it. Experience in the capitalist Third World shows that this type of democracy accommodates itself very well to the most corrupt clientelism and patronage.
Hoàng Minh Chính presents a far too optimistic picture of the contemporary world. He also draws an overly unilateral balance sheet of the past, making of "leftism" the sole "generator of all ills". In fact, in the field of international politics, the Stalinist policy has more than once been "rightist"
Stalinism and colonialism
The Vietnamese revolution has also paid a strong price for this "opportunism"
as in 1936-39 when, in the name of antifascism, Moscow and the French Communist Party accepted the colonial status of
Indo-China; in 1945-46, when they "recognized" Vietnam as belonging to the western "zone of influence"; in 1954 when the Soviet Union and China imposed heavy concessions of great consequence on the Vietnamese fighters during the Geneva negotiations; and at the beginning of the 1960s, when Khruschev negotiated an agreement of peaceful coexistence with Washington.
This debate is not academic. Reformism
- whether social democratic or Stalinist
— has opened the road to some of the bloodiest counter-revolutions, like in
Indonesia in 1965-66 and Chile in 1973.
The perspective proposed by Hoàng
Minh Chính is illusory. But the questions ne poses are nonetheless well lounded - and not easy to answer. It is necessary to relaunch the revolutionary dynamic, particularly through radical democratic reforms. But it is necessary also to avoid the market and the multinationals imposing their own dictatorship on society, with the transformation of a part of the bureaucratic elite into a new bourgeoisie. To a large extent the concrete forms of a transitional economy and a socialist democracy 12 adapted to national realities remain to be • discovered. Finally, and above all, it is International Viewpoint #209 • June 24, 1991
Leftism is the root of all evils WE reproduce below major parts of the "contribution to the political programme" submitted by the former rector of the Institute of Philosophy at Hanoi, Hoàng Minh Chinh, in the context of the debate prior to the 7th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) (see /V 201 and 204). The document was translated into French by the review Doàn Kêt, which published it in full in its April 1991 edition. DOCUMENT
HE [preparation of the 7th ConT gress of our party] raises burn, theoretical and practical problems and invites discussion. I respond in all sincerity, without seeking to spare sensitivities. The constraints imposed by the form of a newspaper article have led me however to sketch my ideas, without elaboration, in the form of theses.
1. One of the great lessons that our party (and many others) must draw from living experience [concerns] infantile ultraleftism, the generator of all other ills. An example of this is the "Theses" advanced in October 1930 by Trân Phu, the first secretary general of the party. [They] are based on a leftist conception of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the prolenecessary to find the means to revive the internationalism of which Third World revolutions have a vital need.
One can agree with Chính that it adds up to a long haul, in which the responsibility of all is engaged.
The debate opened up by Hoàng Minh Chính is thus both inevitable, because of the current international situation, and legitimate and necessary. It cannot be "resolved" by administrative repression. However, the leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party continues to employ selective repression against the "oppositionist" intellectuals or political cadres.
The writer Duong Thu is still imprisoned, accused of having "had the intention of gathering and sending abroad documents inimical to national security? Th editor-in-chief of the Hô Chi Mính City review Tuoi Tre ("Youth") was suspended from her functions on May 28 for having published on its front page an article on the "Letters of Nguyên Ai Quôc [Hô Chi Mính] to his wife", whereas according to his official biography, he never married.
A French filmmaker of Vietnamese oritariat which has dominated the practice of the party in the course of its history. They were put forward in opposition to the "Political Programme" of February 3, 1930, of Nguyên Ai Quôct, which advocated national unity as a revolutionary strategy. [These] "Theses" have had devastating consequences; [such as] the insurrections precipitated [and the repression of these] which show the errors of Maoist leftist dogmatism. Campaigns bearing the mark of Stalinism and Maoism have caused incalculable waste and losses of human life....
2. Another, no less important lesson, [concerns] the strategy of national unity of classes, of popular layers, of religious believers, of ethnic groups and of differing political opinions. This political line, gin, Gesbert Bernard Romai, was arrested, then expelled, for making a film "falsifying the situation in Vietnam and encouraging opposition" and bringing "reactionary" documents into the coun try?. Bui Duy Tam, an American of Vietnamese origin, has also been expelled for receiving such documents. These amount to measures of intimidation aimed at cutting the "dissidents" off from all contacts with the outside world.
The preparatory debates for the 7th congress of the VCP have been entirely "sewn up" by the leadership. That means that the congress itself will resolve none of the problems posed by the very difficult situation the Vietnamese revolution is going through. * 6. It is perhaps in this sense (that of liberties) that Viên notes that it is necessary to speak of "popular democracy" and not "bourgeois democracy" (see his "Letter", IV 204). It is noteworthy that while critics like Buí Tin, Nguyên Khac Vên and Hoàng Minh Chính agree on, for example, the democratic demands, their respective analyses also differ profoundly, notably in their appreciation of the social dynamic of capitalism. 7. Le Monde, May 15, 1991. 8. Hô Chi Minh seems to have had at least a companion in France, in the 1920s, and another, later, in China. 9. Le Monde, May 15, 1991.
put forward by Nguyên Ai Quôc [in 1930] was qualified by Trân Phu, and the central committee of the time — indeed the International, completely dominated by Stalin — as rightist, reformist, nationalist and devoid of class position. They forced Nguyên Ai Quôc to make a self-criticism. But the history of the Vietnamese revolution has shown in a striking manner that each time this great policy of national unity has been implemented, it has met with success [and that it] is not only indispensable in the national democratic revolution, but also throughout the stages of the socialist revolution?
3. [The current] draft programme proposes an analysis of the world situation [conforming to] the dogmatic vision of 30 or 40 years ago [which] can only lead to strategic orientations which do not correspond to, indeed which are contrary to, the
Hoàng Minh Chính
* BORN around 1925. Involved in militant activity from an early age.
Imprisoned by the colonlal regime.
After 1945, a fighter in the People's
Liberation Army (decorated for valour in 1954).
* Nominated to the leadership of the Communist Youth after the liberation of North Vietnam (1954). Sent,
In 1957, at the head of the first Vietnamese class at the higher cadre school of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union. * He was convinced by Khruschev's secret 1956 speech on the crimes of Stalin of the need to struggle against the Stalinist and Maoist influence Inside the Vietnamese
Communist Party (VCP), Nominated rector of the Institute of Philosophy on his return to Hanol (1960). He drafted a political platform on the
Sino-Soviet conflict, adopted by the political bureau of the VCP. * Opposed the line of the central committee of November-December
1963, where the VCP sided with the
Chinese CP in Ideological opposition to Moscow. Wrote several texts defending his positions (1963 and
1967). Characterized as revision-
, he was condemned without trial, expelled from the VCP, and spent a decade in detention or house arrest. * In June 1981, sent a petition to the National Assembly. Once more condemned to administrative detention. Freed five years later, after the
6th Congress of the VCP (1986).
Wrote, in January 1991, a "contributIon" to the preparatory debate ol the 7th Congress of the VCP. * general tendency of the world today.
Since the end of the Second World War, the capitalist countries (including the vanquished] have put to profit the scientific and technical revolutions (in the field of biology, and above all in that of information), regulating themselves, adapting themselves to the rapid pace of change in the world, and thereby overcoming numerous grave periodic crises. If they have not completely escaped from general crisis, they have nonetheless made prodigious process, passing to a postindustrial civilization and an information civilization. This is true even for the newly industrialized countries of the Third World, like the "dragons" of the Far East.3. At the same time, the socialist world (in Europe, Asia, Latin America, as in Africa) has indulged itself in an abstract ideology of dogmatic leftism....
Here resides the cause of the latent economic, political, social and moral crises which socialism has experienced for 45 years, crises which have finally broken out [into broad daylight]. The model of socialism has been shattered
[in 1989] by the very will of the people concerned.
. One cannot decree arbitrarily that this collapse is the result of some imperialist plot seeking to "peacefully transform"
the socialist camp. Let us have the courage to recognize the cause, in all lucidity, whatever it costs us; an inherent cancer which has gnawed the body of actually existing socialism and which has reached its ultimate stage...
Fundamental and marvellous phenomenon
Humanity is now witnessing a phenomenon, fundamental and marvellous... which dogmatic souls cannot see. It is, with the end of the Cold War, the disappearance of the spectre of world war, of nuclear conflagration
(which does not exclude regional armed conflicts). Confrontation gives way to the dialogue of nations, of member states of the United Nations, which could cooperate to find a solution to the burning problems which menace the survival of the human race... Certainly, we are only at the beginning of a long road sown with snares, but the road is opened. The information civilization forces states, nations and peoples to evolve rapidly, to revise radically their conceptions of the world, the epoch, the social system, [of] all the essential questions....
To accede to the information era, each people must ... give first place to intellectual work - to the scientists, the intellectuals, the creators, to promote a modern national education, to engage itself resolutely in the course of scientific progress and the new technologies...
4.....After having remarked with justice that "Vietnam starts from the posi-
VIETNAM Release political prisoners!
THE following appeal was issued in France on April 25, 1991, signed by over 370 people, including many leading French and Vietnamese intellectuals:
"Mme. Duong Thu Huong, writer, scriptwriter and poet, after two years of threats, has been arrested in Hanoi because of her political views. The undersigned, active for many years in solidarity with the
Vietnamese people, protest against this arbitrary act of repression against an intellectual who has brought honour to women and to
Vietnamese literature, and whose courageous voice expresses the aspirations of an entire people to democratic change. They demand the immediate liberation of Duong
Thu Huong and all the detainees held because of their political views.
They demand an urgent international mobilization in their defence".
Further information from: Doàn
Kêt, 193 Rue de Bercy, 75582-
Paris, Cedex 12, France. * tion of a colonial, semi-feudal society, its economy dominated by small production" - classed by the United Nations among the ten poorest countries of its 160 member states — [the draft programme] affirms that "our country passes to socialism by skipping the stage of capitalist development" (draft programme, chapter 11, point 2). ...How can Vietnam [do this]? The path indicated by Lenin implies "fraternal aid in all areas on the part of the countries which have achieved the construction of developed socialism". At the current time, no socialist "rearguard" country of this kind exists....
In these conditions, for a country like Vietnam, whose rural backward economy is still at the pre-capitalist stage "to pass directly to socialism by relying on its own forces, by skipping the stage of capitalist development" amounts to following a road characterized by Marx, Engels and Lenin as anti-scientific, anti-historic and utopian. At least unless one expects the developed capitalist countries to help us .... to directly construct socialism! Height of irony, that is precisely what the draft programme proposes to us.
To finish, I want to make five propositions. 1. Nguyên Ai Quôc was a pseudonym used before the Second World War by Hô Chi Minh. The "Theses" of Trân Phu remain an official reference document. 2. The stage of the "national democratic revolution" essentially precedes the seizure of power (1954 in the North, 1975 in the South). The socialist revolution suc-
13 ceeds it immediately. 3. South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. June 24, 1991 • #209 International Viewpoint
VIETNAM / IRAN
(i) To renounce definitively Maoist ideology and start genuinely from the concrete conditions of Vietnam. [To elaborate_ for some years to come a line, a strategy and an urgent plan of national salvation.
(ii) To value all the human and material potential of all classes and social layers, all ethnic groups, all religions, of the
Vietnamese diaspora around the world, in appealing to all the capitalists and the workers, peasants and intellectuals of all regions and countries ..... The market economy must obey the laws of value, of supply and demand. This implies legalized competition, a creative enterprise spirit, the search for profit, privatization and the diversification of property.
(iii) To unblock foreign relations in the new spirit promoted by the United Nations, so as to open Vietnam to foreign investment, new technologies and the efficient methods of management of the advanced capitalist countries, the newly industrialized countries and the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). To open special economic zones along the coast, in the manner of the Chinese Shenzhen zone. To have the ambition of becoming the fifth or sixth "economic dragon" in one or two decades.
(iv) To dare to suspend the so-called objective of immediate and long term construction of socialism". '. It is a matter of more haste, less speed, for socialism as conceived by Marx, Engels, and Lenin exists only in the form of abstract thought, a working hypothesis.... Even academic experts in Marxism-Leninism and in models of actually existing socialism no longer dare to claim to have a response to the question: "what is socialism?"
### Heritage of Vietnamese nation
Let us return resolutely to the "political programme of Nguyên Ai Quôc" [of the 1945-55 period], the platform of "the bourgeois-democratic revolution" which 14 was able to channel the cultural heritage • of the Vietnamese nation, to respond to International Viewpoint #209 • June 24, 1991 the aspirations of the people in all its components... It goes without saying that the bourgeois-democratic revolution is a long haul.... Historic precedent teaches us that it has taken a hundred to two hundred years to carry out this great revolution, whether it be the French revolution of 1789 (200 years), the Meiji era reforms in Japan (120 years, starting from the Iwakura mission of 1871) or the American revolution (200 years). (v) The whole world knows the famous slogan of president Hô Chi Mính: "Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty".
The president said also that indepen dence without democratic liberties is only a formal independence... What are the profound causes of [the absence, in Vietnam, of real democracy]? The first cause resides in article 4 of the 1980 constitution which institutionalized the powers of the party: "the Vietnamese Communist Party is the sole leading force of the state and the society". This absolute power became, in the hands of cadres at all levels of the hierarchy, in particular the degenerate cadres, an absolute weapon authorizing all abuses, privileges and prerogatives, corruption, repression, lies and hypocrisy.
The absolute power of the party transformed itself into the absolute personal power of each of its representatives...The history of the years 1950-70 shows that all the socialist states have established this implacable relation of cause and effect; the economic, political, ideological monopoly, the monopoly of information and the truth leading inexorably to totalitarianism and dictatorship... To become a true democracy, there is no other road than that indicated by Lenin: "We do not reject absolutely the slogans of bourgeois democracy, we put into practice that which is most democratic in these slogans, and in a manner more radical, more complete and more resolute"4
Humanity has until now found only one type of democracy (which is still perhaps not the best) - the regime based on the separation of the three powers, the state of laws, presidential parliamentarianism, pluralism, freedom of the press....
Let us hope that in the future, thanks to the development of the democratic institutions of the existing capitalist regimes (capitalism is far from being an ideal model, exempt from all defects) and to advances in the sense of the humanist ideals of socialism, humanity will be able in the course of the first decades of the third millenium to create a fully free and democratic regime in the service of all. 4. The author cites as a reference for this quotation the French language edition of Lenin's "Complete Works", Editions du Progrès, Moscow, 1980, volume 27, page 558.
Power struggle amongst the Mullahs SINCE the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's clerical bourgeois regime has witnessed a continuing struggle between forces wishing to "normalize" the country's position on the international stage and stabilize regular state institutions, and others who base their power on the informal institutions of the Islamic revolution.
In the interview published below, Iranian revolutionary Marxist, Mahmood Kafaie, who has spent several years in the jails of Iran's Islamic Republic for his political activities, spoke to /V about the present state of play in the struggle between Iran's "moderates" and "radicals" W E read a lot in the West-
Hern press about a power struggle in the Iranian regime between the so-called radicals and the pragmatists, associated with President Rafsanjani, who wish to make an opening to the West. What is the reality behind this picture?
The basic cause of the division is the consolidation of bourgeois institutions, although many questions of religious and ideological principle have become involved. From the beginning the Islamic regime was based on committees, the Pasdaran [Islamic militia] and the clerical hierar-
chy, as opposed to the regular police, army and state bureaucracy. Now, to consolidate bourgeois institutions a big purge of the leaders of the regime has to be carried through, affecting even the top levels of the clergy. A move is afoot to push them out of positions of power.